Month: February 2009

It’s a hot sunny afternoon and I am out of work. I wasn’t able to come to the office due to the shoulder pain that I am enduring. Thanks to Salonpas and Alaxan for keeping me going even for some couple of hours.

I checked my BDO Cash Card to see if our salary has been released. I am planning to go the doctor or the a nearby massage parlor, as what Jhack has suggested, and get a soothing, therapeutic massage. To my dismay, my account balance is still zero. I was not surprised. Our salary is usually delayed if the payday falls 2 to 3 days after the cut-off date.

And so, I am left penniless with an aching shoulder.

I wished I could come to the office and work but I know I can’t be that productive and might end up whining the whole day.

To accomplish something today, I went to the postal office to pick-up my postal ID. Oh yeah, I finally have a postal ID. One that all establishments accept as a valid ID. Finally, I am recognized as a legitimate resident in our area and that I am already in the legal age.

Oh well, nothing much to do in this hot, lazy friday afternoon. Kinda boring when you are used to cramming office tasks.

Many of us are having hard time in designing our web sites. We aim to be creative and yet we usually end up having an overpopulated layout.

One way to avoid a cluttered design is to identify first what are the elements of our site. Here is a quick list:

Logo

Navigation

Content

Footer

Whitespace

Logo
The crucial element for me is the logo because it defines your site. It gives that unique personality every web site should have. The logo should reflect what your site is about or theme you are aiming. Effective logo’s serves as ID’s. When you see it, you know which site it is.

Navigation
Navigation, as what the word implies, serves as your visitors’ guide around your site. It should be as user-friendly as possible and is readily-accessible to user. Make it clean and readable. It should by eye catching.

Let us admit, most visitors are lazy. They won’t bother searching around your page just looking for your navigation bar. They won’t play easter egg hunt with you. If can’t find their way around, surely, expect the sad face from your reader.

An effective way to have user-friendly navigation is to add images to your links. “Search” links in the navigation bar usually as a picture of a magnifying glass while a house icon is used on “Home” links.
The navigation also is the element where you could practice your creativity and wild imagination. Here is a great link of Creative Navigation Links.

Content
This is part where the main agenda goes. This could contain your article, photo gallery, sample scripts and other contents of your website. Things to design in this part are the headings, tables, links and listing blocks

Footer
In the not so long, long time ago, footer is only a paragraph blocks that contains a copyright symbol and a sentence about property rights and disclaimer. In Web 2.0, footer now plays as an important designing block. Many web designers play around with their footers. They give bold and accent to this usually disregarded part of the site and add more use to this element.
Smashing magazine has a great article about footers in the modern web design.

Whitespace
Finally, whitespace. Many of us doesn’t appreciate its value. As for me, whitespace helps in giving eye focus to the readers. It gives your site clean feel and organized layout. It prevents that overwhelming feeling you usually feel when visiting a cluttered site.

Last year we both a personal site named thinkbrightcreations.com. We have been busy with other stuffs that we could no longer attend to tasks regarding to its web development. It has been stagnant for 2 months, idling with it is our dreams.

It took me 6 hours for the whole week to design and do psd-to-html conversion. My sleepness night was worth it. And so, today, i have finally finished the template for TBC and was able to update the live site.

There are still lots of server-side tasks to do but we’re happy that we could now let in visitors.

I was looking for a Demi Lovato music in youtube until i found this video, “Don’t Forget- Demi Lovato Cover”. So I checked it out. It wasn’t Demi who was singing but a girl named Kina Grannis. She has an amazing voice and the song really fit her.

Tonight is the final night. After a couple of months of waiting and excitement, we will now know the very first Pinoy Fear Factor Winner and be called “El Ultimo Participante”.

From 12 fearless players, now they are down to 3. The final three participants are composed of Janna Dominguez, Jommy Teotico and Marion dela Cruz.

The Final 3

Last night’s challenge was to hold a tarantula inside the participant’s mouth. After 2 minutes, the player must then eat the tarantula as fast as possible. Knowing how tough players Marion and Jommy are, it was a great surprise that they are the bottom 2 and that Janna was the fastest among the 3.

The elimination for this leg will be aired tonight. Who between Jommy and Marion will stay?